Category: Activisim

Bushwig Celebrates Pride & Rides In Solidarity With BLM

Post author By sidewalkkilla
Post date 28 Jun
No Comments on Bushwig Celebrates Pride & Rides In Solidarity With BLM

Bushwig Pride x BLM

PRIDE/ACTIVISM

The only acceptable way of celebrating Pride in 2020 is if you are doing it in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Bushwig drag festival organizers did just that on Friday, June 26. The event started off with a three-mile bike ride from Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick and ended at McCarren Park in Williamsburg. In Buswhig’s style, attendees were encouraged to wear wigs. Drag performer Merrie Cherry led the horde of colorful bikers in a red convertible. A few hundred people ended up gathering on the lawns of McCarren Park, listening to the evening’s speakers, watching performances by The Dragon Sisters, Magenta, Jette Grey, C’etait BonTemps, and more. The donations provided during the event were to be split between the performers and a grassroots non-profit organization, G.L.I.T.S. (Gays and Lesbians Living In a Transgender Society), that houses homeless black trans people. Amongst the highlights of the evening was the event’s speaker and performer Jette Grey, a black trans sex worker, asking people to donate money to her Venmo account, so that she could help other trans people in need. In just a couple of hours she announced that she has collected over $7,000, with the donations going over $10K by the next day. The event finished off with a fiery speech by Samuel Nemir Olivares – a progressive Latinx, queer state committee candidate – and a dance party that was eventually ended by police intervention.

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Alexey Kim

Founder

EVENTS

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Tags adele computer, babes trust, black lives matter, black trans lives matter, bushwig, buswhig 2020, glow job, horrochata, horrorchata, jette grey, magenta, ruby fox, Sookie Sterling, the dragon sisters, tyler ashley

Activisim Editorial Events Latest

Queer Juneteenth Jubilee in Harlem

Post author By sidewalkkilla
Post date 20 Jun

Juneteenth Jubilee

ACTIVISM

Harlem, NYC

“Juneteenth Jubilee” in Harlem was organized by Marti G Cummings, Jaime Cepera, Phillip Henry, Condola Rashad, Shakina, Destinee Rea and black led organizations The Blacksmiths, WideAwakes and Intersectional Voices Collective. The event’s goal was to celebrate Black Lives through Joy- a celebration in the form of protest.

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Alexey Kim

Founder

EVENTS

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Activisim Editorial Events Latest

15K People Show Up For Black Trans Lives At Brooklyn Liberation March

Post author By sidewalkkilla
Post date 16 Jun

ACTIVISM

Brooklyn Liberation

An Action For Black Trans Lives

sidewalkkilla

Around 15K people wearing all white

showed up to Brooklyn Liberation March for Black Trans Lives.

Around 15,000 people wearing all white showed up for the Brooklyn Liberation Action in support of Black Trans Lives. Brooklyn-based drag artist West Dakota drew inspiration from the 1917 Silent Protest Parade organized by the NAACP that was held in response to an attack on the black community in East St. Louis. Fran Tirado, Eliel Cruz, Dix Peyton, Raquel Willis, and organizations like G.L.I.T.S., The Okra Project, For The Gworls, Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, and the Emergency Release Fund joined the movement.

Raquel Willis, Junior Mint and West Dakota

Ceyenne Doroshov

The rally’s hosts Junior Mintt and Joshua Obawole asked Black trans people to move up to the very front of the crowd. Heartfelt speeches by Ianne Fields Stewart, Ceyenne Doroshow, Raquel Willis, and the family of Layleen Polanco followed next. Doroshov, an author, activist, and the founder of G.L.I.T.S. (Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society) has been housing 5 Black trans people recently released from Rikers Island. During her passionate speech on top of the Brooklyn Museum, Doroshov broke down in tears, sharing that almost $1 million has been raised in order for her organization to be able to buy two buildings in NYC to house Black trans people: “We have always been last, that’s not gonna happen anymore. We’re first… We have never had equity in the city of New York. Motherfuckers, we do now.” By the time the Brooklyn Liberation March of over 15K people has reached its final destination at Fort Greene Park, Doroshov announced that someone had just contributed $9,000, pushing the donations to the $1 million goal. But the fundraiser doesn’t stop there. “Ceyenne has BIG plans, if we can keep the momentum going we’ll be able to impact the landscape of sustainable housing for Black trans people for decades to come,” states G.L.I.T.S.’ e-mail campaign. If you would like to donate, head over to the G.L.I.T.S. donation page.

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Alexey Kim

Founder

EVENTS

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Activisim Events Latest

NYC Anti-Cop Riots

May 29

As Minneapolis riots are still raging on, the anti-cop protests have sparked up all over the US. On May 29, several protests were held all over NYC. The protest at Barclays Center quickly turned into a riot. People demanded justice for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breanna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Eric Garner and many other black lives lost due to police violence.

Take a look at our coverage that started at Foley Square and ended in hostile altercations at Barclays Center Arena in Brooklyn, New York.

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Alexey Kim

Founder

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EDITORIALS

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Tags ahmaud arbery, barclays center, Breanna Taylor, Eric Garner, foley square, george floyd, Philando Castile, police riots, Sandra Bland

Activisim Events Latest

Opinion: What Is Your Responsibility When Representing Your Community?

Post author By sidewalkkilla
Post date 26 Dec

EVENTS | ACTIVISM

Opinion: What Is Your Responsibility When Representing Your Community?

A non-binary drag fixture in the Brooklyn queer community, Thee Suburbia, held a fundraiser for the Trans Women of Color Collective (TWOCC), a nonprofit organization based out of Washington, DC, and helmed by black trans activist Dr. Lourdes Ashley Hunter. What was meant to be a supportive and uplifting event took a sudden turn due to unexpected hostility and verbal abuse directed towards the attendees by Dr. Hunter throughout most of the night.

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Thee Suburbia living for one of the performers

The fundraiser’s lineup included over 30 performers, most of whom were trans women of color. Thee Suburbia had the idea of starting The PoC Drag Art Collective for a while, and it took physical shape in Suburbia’s home, during Thanksgiving dinner, when she invited fellow queer creatives and announced her intention of holding the first PoC Drag Art Collective. “She just kind of posted up a sign-up sheet and told us to sign our names if we wanted to perform,” J Rosa reminisced about that evening, after their performance as Jack Skellington.

“Before we even figured out who we wanted to give money to, we were already creating awareness to support trans women of color, hence why the event’s lineup was mostly comprised of trans women,” Thee Suburbia stated in explaining the importance of creating this project. “We wanted to show how much we cared about people who might need more help; we also wanted people to experience the connection we are creating for each other.”

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The event was held at a DIY space called Hartstop, located in the Bed-Stuy (short for Bedford-Stuyvesant) neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn queer community is not new in creating DIY spaces to hold events – those are the spaces where everyone feels the safest, it seems: the Casa Diva party that used to be held at Charlene Incarnate’s industrial loft has achieved almost legendary status, while the Brooklyn Nightlife Awards 2019 winner for “Best Party,” Oops!, takes over The Rosemont bar every Wednesday to do whatever the creators Juku, West Dakota, and Magenta desire.

Thee Suburbia reached out to me a week prior to the event, asking me to attend her first fundraiser she worked so hard to arrange. It took me over an hour to get to Bed-Stuy from Harlem, but I didn’t dare miss an event with such an amazing lineup that also was supporting a good cause. The performances were scheduled to start at 6 pm and go on until 12 am.

I was about an hour late, but I got there just in time to catch a few performers from the earlier lineup. Dr. Lourdes Ashley Hunter showed up just a few moments after me, wearing a yellow African print dress. Soon after that, Suburbia invited Dr. Hunter to the microphone to introduce herself. Dr. Hunter started off her speech by advertising a book that was made for her by “a white woman” who wanted all of the proceeds from the book’s sales to benefit the TWOCC. “I got books for sale and I am not taking any of them home with me, so all of you hoes will purchase a book tonight…” Dr. Hunter proclaimed to the crowd’s cheers and laughter. She wrapped up her speech by noting that a black trans woman was murdered in DC “three days ago,” and that on the way to New York she learned that another trans woman had been murdered two days ago “three miles away from here.” “And it’s a bit much,” she continued, “so we are here to celebrate black trans women.”

During the first break between the performances, I wandered over to the side of the room where Dr. Hunter had set up a poster with photos and a quote that read, “I don’t want to be visible because I am trans. I want to be seen, affirmed and celebrated as a whole damn person… I want to wake up without a threat of violence! I want to fall in love, raise a family and pass down traditions my grandma and mom passed to me. I want to thrive without fear! I don’t want to have to tell you all about my pain for you to then journey towards an understanding that trans folk deserve to breathe, to live and thrive in a world that celebrates all of who we are… Humans.”

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Dr. Lourdes Ashley Hunter

Moved by the inspiring quote, I turned around to find Dr. Hunter standing right in front of me. “Are you buying the book?” she inquired, to which I replied: “Sure, but I will get it a little bit later.”

Dr. Hunter looked me dead in the eye and said, “So you are not buying the book?”

“I will, but I wanted to ask you a couple of questions first about the work that you do.” I perceived an immediate shift in her attitude the moment I said I wasn’t going to buy the book on the spot.

“Why are you asking me this, do you wanna date me?” – which she didn’t say in a funny way; it felt like I had asked someone a question that I had no business asking.

“No… I just wanted to find out a bit more about your work,” I proceeded cautiously.

She made a frustrated puffing sound, simultaneously flipping up her hair and pointing both of her upper extremities to the poster behind me: “Well, go to my website and you can read what you need to know there.”

“I prefer to hear it directly from the source…,” I continued, even though I could feel the ground was getting shaky.

“Well then, you should have already known what this event was about before coming here, this event is for me!” she said, starting to lose her cool.

I made a mental check that she emphasized that the event was for her and not for her non-profit, but I went on: “Well, I am writing an article about this, so I thought…”

“I don’t give a fuck what you do! This event is about raising money! I don’t have time to explain! Black trans women are dying! We don’t have time to explain shit!” – she went berzerk.

I started shaking. This was so unexpected and the exchange was making me feel uneasy and unwelcome, all at once.

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Junior Mint

I withdrew myself from the argument and stood to the side. One of the performers of the night, Junior Mint, a black trans woman known for her funny yet politically charged performances, approached Dr. Hunter at that moment to chat, only to be met with: “Tell him sis! We ain’t got time to explain shit! Black trans women are dying!” At that moment I just got really pissed off and couldn’t stay quiet. I turned to Dr. Hunter and asked her if she really thought it was wise to shut someone down when they come to her with a question about her cause, to which she became even more unravelled, screaming: “You are a cis gay man! Don’t start with me! I’m a black trans woman!”

With that statement I felt like she had just invalidated my entire existence, like whatever I had gone through in my life didn’t matter at all. It made me feel small and unimportant, almost like an outsider that dared to invade a space that wasn’t built for me. At that moment I was ready to leave. I had gone to the event with the aim of supporting the cause and writing up something in support of the work that Suburbia and TWOCC were doing together. What was I supposed to write about now?

I went up to the rooftop to catch some fresh air. Thee Suburbia was standing there talking to a couple of other performers. She turned to me and asked me how I was doing. I told her what had just transpired. She showed instant concern and a flicker of a shadow appeared on her face. “I’m so sorry that happened,” she said. “It’s not your fault, maybe she is just drunk,” I responded.

After staying up on the roof for a bit, I decided to stay for the rest of the talent that was slated to perform later in the evening.

Zenobia, Charlene, Islaya, MTHR TRSA, Dai Burger

Throughout the night, over 30 queer PoC performers have taken the stage: Jayse Vegas, Dezi5, Showdolliana, Junior Mint, Robert Garcia, Xtain, La Candelaria, J Rosa, John Mateo, Zenobia, Charlene, Islaya, MTHR TRSA, Senerio, Foxy Belle Afriq, Sir Charles, Juniper Juicy, Kenzi Coulee, Denime The Queen, Xunami Muse, Paris L’Hommie, Caribu Vague, DJ Hard Candy, Thee Suburba herself, Dancer On Probation, Tina Twirler, Glow Job, Onyma, Skittlez, J’Royce Jata, Dévo Monique, Jypsy Jeyfree, Marcel, B Hawk Snipes, Mojo Disco, and the headliner of the night Dai Burger.

Even though Dr. Hunter was living for everyone’s performances, she kept on sprinkling the crowd with violent verbal outbursts. At one point she snatched the mic from MTHR TRSA, the second host of the night, and asked for a chair. When the person manning the mix board moved a stool towards her, she commanded: “Bring its height up, white person!” The audience responded with uncomfortable laughter. At another point of the night, she snatched the mic from MTHR TRSA again while she was in the middle of introducing the next performer, responding to the host’s polite protest: “I don’t give a fuck about the next performance! Listen to me!”

Several times throughout the night she grabbed the tip bucket and ran around the room demanding that people put money into it: “I know you got coins, cuz I see you buying drinks at the bar!,” “Come on you white motherfuckers, I know you got money!,” “If you are not donating money, then why the fuck are you here!?” The barrage of verbal abuse towards the crowd went on incessantly. Right before Charlene was about to perform, Dr. Hunter misgendered her: “You are a white cis woman, what are you doing here?” By this point, no one was trying to cover up the uncomfortable situation with laughter any more, and many people were leaving. Finally, during one of Dr. Hunter’s attempts to extort the crowd, in a sign of defeat she rested her elbow on MTHR TRSA’s shoulder and pronounced: “You know what, I don’t need this.”

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Eventually Suburbia came up to me and told me that she and a group of other people staged an intervention and asked Dr. Hunter to leave. The atmosphere significantly lightened up after that, and the people who showed up after this point were clueless about the night’s earlier episode.

Suburbia said: ”We just told her that this is the party we are putting together, we don’t know how many people were going to come or what it was going to look like, we just knew that we wanted to give her something and quickly it turned into her saying that we agreed to pay her.” I asked why the PoC Drag Art Collective chose this specific organization as a beneficiary. “I looked her up,” Suburbia responded, “I read about things she was doing, I read a lot about her collective. That night, a lot of people came because of her workshops. It really looked great on paper. In the beginning a part of me wanted to give to the Ali Forney Center, The Trevor Project, Audre Lorde, something like that, but I wanted to do something for someone that’s smaller, someone who could actually appreciate that we do something for them.”

It didn’t feel like Dr. Hunter was appreciative of anything. She treated the entire event with a palpable sense of entitlement, like everyone in attendance owed her something and was supposed to shower her with money at the ready. For her, if you were not a trans woman of color, you didn’t exist.

The insensitive and hurtful approach exhibited by Dr. Lourdes Hunter, regarded as a representative of black trans women, raises many questions and concerns. Should we be more mindful of people that we invite into the safety of our communities? Should people that represent a certain group be accountable for their actions? Just because someone is passionate about an issue, does that mean they are properly equipped with the right tools to represent their community?

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Glow Job

As one of the night’s performers Glow Job perfectly summed it up: “I was giving Suburbia a pep talk upstairs cause she was pretty devastated. But we all still showed up, and we were all there because we wanted to be a part of this and do some good, so that when we do it again and then again, it’ll get bigger and better and we’ll look back on this first one that started it all, and reflect on its craziness. It’s epicness in a way. There is an opportunity to grow and to come together stronger as a group that really drives that conversation even within the community. There was a lot of energy, attention, and time that people put into this night, and I personally hope it could keep going and should only be bigger and better from this point on. If anything, there is more drive to protect this group and make it something worth fighting for for next time.”

It’s almost impossible not to compare the two completely opposite approaches taken by Dr. Hunter and by Thee Suburbia. At the end of the day, we have to be accountable for our actions when we take on the responsibility of representing a group or a community, and we must make sure that our approach doesn’t hurt the message. The wrong delivery can push people further away or tune them off completely, even possibly perpetuating stigmas about your community.

No one wants to be belittled or made to feel bad based on ignorant assumptions that you’ve had it so much better based on your race, sexual preference, experience, or gender. Love, kindness, openness, and willingness to educate will always be the only right approach to getting your message across and drawing people in to care about it. Thee Suburbia exhibited all these qualities masterfully, and I cannot wait for the next PoC Drag Art Collective gathering and to support her in her incredible work.

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Suburbia POC Fundraiser - Sidewalkkilla.com

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Alexey Kim

Founder

EVENTS

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Activisim ACTIVISM Editorial Events

How I lost My Activism Virginity And Why You Should Too

Post author By sidewalkkilla
Post date 30 Sep
No Comments on How I lost My Activism Virginity And Why You Should Too

ACTIVISM

Climate Strike, September 27, 2019

Sunset Park, Brooklyn

sidewalkkilla

Sidewalkkilla attended Climate Strike in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on September 27, 2019. The march was organized by a climate justice organization “Uprose.”

SCROLL DOWN

During September’s “Global Week for Future,” over 6 million people all over the world took to the streets demanding their governments take action to address climate change. A series of passionate speeches by climate strike youth leader Greta Thunberg were a catalyst to last week’s series of global protests. The first youth-led wave of climate strikes on September 20, ahead of the UN’s Climate Action Summit on September 23, amassed over 2 million marchers. The US, the second-biggest polluter in the world, left the Paris Agreement in 2017; that agreement tasked world leaders to limit their countries’ greenhouse gas emissions to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels , according to Vox.

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I missed the first Friday for Future climate strike on September 20, so I had to make sure to attend a strike the following Friday. I was interested in finding a small march that would be held in a New York neighborhood that I’d never visited before. Thanks to my old friend Google I found a strike that was going to take place in Sunset Park, a waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn.

I got to Sunset Park a couple of hours before sunset, and the first thing I saw was about a hundred people peacefully sitting on a grassy slope, listening to speeches by different activists. Several people gathered behind benches where speakers were standing up and holding self-made protest signs and posters.

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A guy standing just a hundred feet to my left quickly caught my attention. He was wearing a crop top and peach velvet pants. It’s fairly easy to spot your own kind, I thought, and as if he read my mind, within two minutes he was standing right beside me offering an activist newspaper. “Come to our meetings, it’s every Wednesday. Just a bunch of queerdos getting together and talking about issues like police brutality, then going in the streets and getting arrested for it.”

He handed me a flyer targeting the MTA – their group’s new campaign. The flyer stated that “The MTA just added 500 cops to stop ‘farebeaters’ and is planning to lay off 2,700 MTA workers.” The MTA is claiming that it’s losing $260 million due to people skipping the fare, “but yet they have enough finances to hire cops.”

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Many speakers spoke next, from a Black Lives Matter movement founder, to three speakers from the International Indigenous Youth Council. The speakers brought up many issues: illegal cattle ranching in Nicaragua, DeBlasio’s plan to build four new jails in order to close the Rikers Island prison complex, ICE targeting Greyhound buses, and so on. But the main focus of the protest organized by “Uprose” – a leading advocate for climate justice – was to fight gentrification and rezoning in the neighborhood.

We then left the park with half a dozen activists carrying several pieces of cardboard that spelled “Climate Justice” as we marched towards Industry City. The predominantly Asian and Latino neighborhood of Sunset Park is afraid that the rezoning of one of the last industrial waterfronts will “push many longtime businesses and residents out,” News 12 Brooklyn reports.

Several speakers took to the microphone to express their frustrations about Industry City, whose owners, they argued, are responsible for the displacement of the local community. In the middle of the protest, Industry City turned on loud music inside its courtyard to drown out the crowd. The executive director of “Uprose,” and a national leader in the climate justice movement, Elizabeth Yeampierre, joked that “They are dancing to displacement.”

Towards the end of the rally, a cop car pulled in, eventually accompanying the marchers on their way back and herding everyone onto the sidewalk. The cops flashed their lights and asked protesters not to spill out onto the road so as to avoid blocking traffic.

I’ve never attended a protest before, and my initial aim was to simply observe, as I never knew how I could personally contribute to any cause. When we got closer to Industry City, one of the marchers asked me if I wanted a sign, and I found myself saying “yes.”

It’s very easy to go through life with your eyes closed, letting someone else make decisions on your behalf – for example, putting our trust in politicians and public figures that we assume will have our best interests. However, when we see that the issues that we care about are not being prioritized on a legislative level, it’s time to take action. It’s obvious that greed and money are taking precedence over vitally important issues like climate change, or basic human rights.

It’s difficult to ignore the fact that climate change is something that will unquestionably affect all of us personally at some point. During that climate strike at Sunset Park, I realized that the first step towards change is knowledge. Go to more local meetings, and educate yourself on present issues as this may be just the right start towards real change.

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